


caught in the mouth of it

by dabblingDilettante



Category: Dangan Ronpa, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Gen, Trans Character, Unrequited Love, non-linear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 13:24:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9387092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dabblingDilettante/pseuds/dabblingDilettante
Summary: A good detective should know when people are lying.





	

**Author's Note:**

> implied trans bullshit with shuichi because [upside down emoji] dangan ronpa is apparently the terrible place i go to pretend theres trans
> 
> So I was watching the prologue and first chapter and decided. Wow. I love unrequited love. So this happened.
> 
> General spoilers for events in the prologue and ch1, but nothing about any death or murder.

Saihara toys with the walls of his assigned dorm, but does not sleep in it. After tending to bruises and broken skin, he cannot stop thinking. The tunnels were filled with traps. It could only be worse here. He looks. There are no special posters for wires to be hidden behind. Even on tiptoe, precariously balanced on a chair, he can't quite examine the monitor hanging from the ceiling. It seems simple. The sheets are starchy and clean and devoid of bugs, electronic or otherwise. And it's a room.

And it isn't like he can remember his own room.

But sleep evades him, even with the brim of his hat pulled down tight over his eyes.

The walls shift in his ears. People pacing rooms, in his mind's eye. Plotting. A detective is aware of these things. Always aware, deep down to his churning gut, and nothing more.

All the clothes in his closet are the same. He closes the door without changing and pulls his jacket on, buttoning it up tight to his neck. Of all the faces hanging above the doors, he can't figure much. Too many voices leave him tired and unsure, so unlike what a mystery should have been. They seem fair. Because no one would kill.

Not without good reason.

No one would kill, Saihara reminds himself. People are meant to care more about their own lives, than that.

With frozen feet, he puts off acknowledging whose door he has paused at. Because Akamatsu should be asleep. Her door should be locked, like the smart young woman she is, curled up ready for another day of escape plans. Even with the second glances she gave him. The awkward smiles, glancing him up and down, hidden behind that hat.

He swallows the thought away.

Detectives stay focused.

It's not in sewers and tunnels they would find their answers. His favorite books fell into escape routes at the sound of dogs and broken promises, but mysteries started with silence. Someone so young couldn't have the experience to brute force through the trouble. But there was one way to fill it.

Night turns the school inside out. The robots stop beating useless metal fists into concrete, as though sleeping away in underground cocoons, or whatever bears happened to do. Moonlight casts the iron bars deep into the ground. Saihara tiptoes along the lines, vertigo spinning the grass below into trees, and waiting ground below. Fingers brush along his ear, and he nearly falls through. In a glance, he looks for a culprit. Heat burning from palms to ears. All that accompanies him is moss and wind and he does not forget to berate himself.

It's the basement he's looking for.

The steps far more hollow without a bright sandy voice behind him, pushing him onward, like 'no' could never have been a thought that snuck into his mind.

Luck takes him to the proper turn, down a darker hall, tripping over broken tiles. Harder than he thought. Floating in empty dark, a breath passes before he hits ground.

Saihara scrambles for his loose hat and clamps it back down on his head, before he could lose anything else.

Pushing himself up, the weight of the pad in his pocket sneaks back into mind. Its faint luminescence does not make the library less nerve-wracking. But the lights stay dead, as he walks in, and he does not reach to force it. Anxious breath disturbing dust was already too much.

It isn't hard to find what he needs. He is recognized as a detective, he reminds himself, Akamatsu's voice leaking in over his own. Louder. Stronger. Confident. It's harder not to pull books from the shelves. Harder not to barricade himself behind a chair to sit, and read, and sleep. She'd expect more.

She does more.

His chest hurts, but Saihara drags over a chair. It's awkward between the pad shoved down his jacket, faintly lighting the way, but he makes it work. He gets it right. Dizzy tired warmth settling over his head, as he reaches to the top of the shelf, and figures it out.

When the bookshelf slides open to a bisected door, black and white, all he can think of is her.

 

 

\----

 

 

Saihara falls out of a locker, and screams at the first voice he hears.

It's loud. Girlish. Foolish.

But he can't swallow it down, can't bring his hands back to hide deep in his hat, from the girl in front of him. Unlikely to be a kidnapper. Annoyed and pained. He can't say which would be worse.

Her words are like a smack in the face.

Her sigh, and smile, and honesty. In comparison, it's like the migraine echoing in his head belonged to someone else.

Akamatsu Kaede is fixated on pianos in the way he knows he should be fixated on crime solving - not mystery novels and paperwork. She doesn't say anything about his voice, or how he is barely taller than her, or his eyes, what little of them she should be able to see. All she does is badger him, confident and bright and open.

When he follows her out the door, Saihara pushes up the brim of his hat. It takes only a moment to give someone a glance. Get a proper impression.

Akamatsu is one of the most beautiful people he's ever seen.

Just in an objective way.

 

 

\----

 

 

She's nice.

Really, really nice.

Saihara should get angry for her sake. Angry like he gets at Iruma over a hat. Angry like he gets at himself for staying silent. But in the heat of the moment, he watches Ouma drag everyone down to his level, and finds other people standing up for her, instead.

So Akamatsu is never quite alone.

She shouldn't be, but she's still standing with her fists clenched, as everyone else has left. And he waits. Or he can't move. The human heart isn't the home of detectives. Saihara figures.

The tunnels have a harsher echo without the full of sixteen talented people there to fill them up. In that, rebounding against metal, is a sonata. A soft hum. Akamatsu's fingers uncurl and she plays the tips along air. He doesn't know the song. He wouldn't. It's not his specialty.

"I don't think it was your fault," he says. He tells her. It's not her fault, he thinks. "You were ..."

When her eyes soften on him, his voice cracks. Akamatsu is more careful. More hopeful, more capable, more able to see the good in other people. She catches it in him and everyone.

"It's fine," she says. "I shouldn't have pushed them so hard!"

His ears are buzzing.

There's something he should tell her. Something in what she's saying. Everyone is gone, and it is the perfect time. With no one to listen. No one to know, but the two of them.

But she looks distracted, looking back down the tunnels. Dirt encrusted under both their nails, and oil, and bruises he can't yet pinpoint.

"Good night," he says.

Half-runs back to his room.

Unable to sleep.

He couldn't sleep in a room like this.

So he spends the night digging through every nook, for any trick left, and trips through floors and walls to the library.

And he presses his fingers through the card slot.

And her room is heavy on his mind.

And her eyes on him, without a single comment, without a single lie.

And he realizes.

Frozen outside the cafeteria, when he sees her through the open slats of windows. She pauses to speak to everyone still outside. All of them. Even the ones who complained. Turned.

"Good morning, Saihara!"

She looks exhausted.

He almost tells her on the spot. Everything he's found. Everything he knows. Everything he hates about how they spoke to her. Everything he thinks about running away.

But he clamps his mouth shut. "I'll tell you later."

When he follows her through the threshold, to everyone waiting in the cafe, there's only one thought on his mind.

He would trust Akamatsu Kaede with his life.

 

 

\---

 

 

She believes in him without reason.

It only makes sense, as a detective, to give her one.

Saihara stands at her door. If she's not sleeping, was she planning? If she hadn't slept, would she be asleep now? Cleaning. Cleaning, he thought, their barebones rooms. Unless she had a piano in hers. Unless she'd already collected a thousand small toys, hidden under chairs in mounting piles. He felt like he had a good understanding of girls' rooms. It'd be hard not to, growing up.

The entrance swings open and he tries not to yelp. Succeeds, even. But Toujou walks around him without a word, and that is likely worse than Iruma or Ouma walking in. Deductive reasoning says that is untrue.

Action says that he rings the buzzer and waits for her answer.

Her eyes are red.

Her eyes are red, and the same old words spill out of his mouth.

"I don't think you're to blame," he tells her. And it's endless, this time. How amazing she is. "That's why I believe in you." Trust, he says, burning deep in his chest.

Saihara can't read minds. So he takes what she says at face value. The awkward smile. The surprised flicker. Like she doesn't know where she's at, between the two of them, either.

"I need you to come to the library with me."

 

 

\---

 

 

"Hey," Akamatsu starts. "Why ... do you come to me, with all this?"

He's glancing at a book, for once. It might have been something to show her. When the two of them were working so hard, it was nice to have an escape. Fun.

It doesn't take a word from him for her to go on. He blinks, and he realizes the answer is on his face.

"I don't know," she sighs. "I guess I'm wondering ... why you're always following me around?"

Because she's the most honest person he knows, here. "You really care about what's going on here," he says. "I think ... if there's anyone who could make this work, it would be you, Akamatsu."

When she laughs, it hurts, breezy sand-worn betweens. "I appreciate the confidence, but. I'm not exactly an investigator."

"That's why I'm here to help."

Akamatsu huffs. It's the book slipped out of his hands, and the binding tapped upon his hat, that makes him look at her.

She says, "You're not here to be my assistant."

"I'm good at that, though..."

"Too bad! I'm not looking for an assistant, Saihara. You'll just have to find another position."

Detectives - well, they detect things. Figure out the right path. Take it.

And he takes off his hat.

And he looks up at her.

"...Can I tell you something?"

She's got eyes that could make a swimming pool boil, and a grin that could make a streetcar bolt. There're a thousand good metaphors. He's read a lot.

"Are you finally going to tell me about why you're so sensitive about your hat?"

She leans close to say it, and he wishes he hadn't taken it off, face burning hot. There's nothing to hide in.

"N-no." His voice wavers. Not sure as to what he wants to say - trust. And fondness, and safety, and the fact that every time he's with her, she pulls him straight and he can think like the way he's supposed to. Except here. And she's close. And she'd never lie. "I just ..."

Akamatsu pulls back.

"I think ..."

Her arms are folded, and it's like a photograph, frozen there.

"You've been so kind to me ... and. I."

She interrupts. "This isn't the time, Saihara."

"That's not it!" He jolts up. Loud, cracking voice, and hides his mouth behind the hat. "Akamatsu..."

"We'll all be friends when we get out of here," she says. A repetition. An echo, and in that, she gives a glance. "We can worry about anything else. Later."

The clock ticks.

There's not one in the library. Something's ticking in his ears.

She takes the hat from his hands and puts it on his head. Gentle.

"We've got a lot to worry about here, right?"

Those awkward smiles. Looking away. Every time he followed her through the halls. Every time she convinced him to walk ahead, lead the way, and away.

"Yeah," he says. "Thank you."

There are many things Saihara reminds himself of.

A good detective stays aware. Cautious. Never too anxious, never too paranoid. Just enough.

And a good detective. A proper one. Is able to know when people are lying.

 

 

 

\---

 

 

 

"I'm just recognized as a detective," Saihara says, in trials. Investigations. He lets it go.

 


End file.
